Three months ago, I published "3 Instant Ways to Improve Your Google Ranking." This article discusses three effective and straightforward methods to increase your website's organic traffic on Google:

• Create content (e.g., host a blog).
• Improve webpage quality (performance, accessibility, etc.)
• Create backlinks

These three things are the cornerstones of search engine ranking factors. Before diving into today's topic, every website should pay attention to these three points, which we will cover in this article.

1. Increase credibility

Just as you dislike calls from unknown and suspicious numbers, Google dislikes websites that appear untrustworthy. Instead, Google prefers to direct users to high-quality and trustworthy sources of information.

Google aims to exclude low-quality, untrustworthy websites from search results and keep high-quality, legitimate websites at the top.

Have you ever considered buying things online, but online stores don't seem trustworthy? What do you do? You might search and read online reviews. Or perhaps you simply Google "Is store XY trustworthy?"

This is how Google distinguishes between suspicious and legitimate websites. When Google crawls a webpage, it evaluates various dimensions to determine its credibility.

If a website has only two weeks of history, no records, and keeps popping up ads, users will immediately leave—this is likely a very untrustworthy website. Therefore, Google will further lower its ranking in future results.

On the other hand, if a website is ten years old, its domain is registered with contact information, users frequently spend a lot of time there, and it connects with thousands of followers across different social media channels—then the website can be trusted, and Google will rank it higher.

Therefore, you can do the following to improve your website's credibility:

• contact information:Ensure your website includes valid contact information, including an email address, phone number, and physical address. This allows users to contact you and gives Google a trustworthy website image. Furthermore, having a clear and easy-to-understand privacy policy and terms of service on your website helps build trust and transparency with users and Google.
• Website age:Website age is essential. For a new domain, the most obvious approach is to wait. However, you can also consider purchasing an established, reputable domain to gain a competitive advantage.
• Social proof:While Google states that social media doesn't directly impact SEO rankings, it can still improve your brand exposure and credibility. Linking to your social media accounts on your website demonstrates to Google that your site is trustworthy.
• Security:Having a secure website (HTTPS, SSL) is a prerequisite for Google. A website without SSL security will put you at a significant disadvantage.
• Domain registration:Ensure that your domain registration method matches the contact information listed on your website. This can be checked by performing a who.is search, which displays registration information for a specific domain.
• Professional design:Avoid using excessive pop-ups and intrusive ads, and ensure your website loads quickly. This not only increases your website's credibility but also improves the user experience, which we will discuss in detail in the next section.

2. Improve user experience

Now, we'll turn our attention to one of the most important topics. We want our users to have a great experience on our website so they stay for as long as possible.

Is your website content engaging enough? Or do people visit and leave your website incredibly quickly?

Many of the points in this article are interconnected, and you can't clearly separate them. Improving user experience naturally increases your website's credibility—because if many people use the site for extended periods, Google will conclude that the site is trustworthy.

Page speed

Ensuring your website loads quickly is perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your website's user experience. Users are unlikely to stay on a website that takes a long time to load.

According to a data report from retail giant Walmart, for every second the page load time is reduced, the conversion rate increases by 2%.

For every 100 milliseconds of improvement, Walmart's total revenue increases by nearly 11 TP3T.

Furthermore, a Google study found that 531 TP3T mobile users leave websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. This was achieved through...Minimize code, lazy loading, caching, and optimize images.Technologies such as [list of technologies] ensure your website loads quickly. For more details on improving page speed, please contact [contact information].Diamond Omnichannel MarketingOur technical staff will help you improve your website's loading speed.

Navigation and Semantic HTML

Ensure your website is easy to navigate. This is important not only for users, but also for Google. Using the correct semantic HTML elements may be the first step in making your website accessible to Google and people with disabilities who rely on screen readers or other tools.

Semantic element = meaningful element w3schools.com

While non-semantic elements like and don't tell you what they mean, semantic elements clearly describe what they mean to the browser and developers. There are approximately 100 semantic elements available.

<div><span><button><nav><table>

#1 Example — Button

Theoretically, we can make every HTML element look like anything we want. Let's look at two buttons:

They look exactly the same, don't they?

They look the same, but the difference is that we can use the second button via a keyboard, finger, voice command, or other assistive technologies.

Why? Let's take a look at the HTML:

                                                                                                   Two HTML buttons with HTML code

You can see that the labeling of our buttons looks different. The first uses 'a', and the second uses 'tag'. The corresponding CSS simply makes the parts look the same. div button

Using the label for the second button automatically provides built- in accessibility features to our page. Other buttons lack these features.

#2 Navigation

Let's look at another example. Many websites contain HTML code like this to indicate navigation, headers, and footers:

However, we should use some HTML semantic elements instead: `<html>`, `<body>`, and `<link>`. For example, the semantic meaning of the element referencing MDN is as follows:

The HTML element represents introductory content, typically a set of introductory or navigational aids. It may contain heading elements, but also logos, search forms, author names, and other elements.

This is what our website looks like when using semantic elements:

Having this structure automatically provides built-in accessibility features for our pages and makes our website easily accessible to search engines like Google.

3. Keyword Research

Regularly publishing good content is the first step. Perhaps you've already created a blog, as mentioned in the first post, and regularly publish good content on your website. By doing so, you're already ahead of all other websites.

• Identify the target audience

Now, it's not enough to just publish good content; you also need to publish content for the people your target audience cares about.

After all, if you're selling tennis rackets, there's no point in publishing great articles about the best football boots.

Identify your target audience and create content around them. Consider their demographics, interests, and pain points. This will help you determine the keywords they might search for.

• Using keyword research tools

Several keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz, can help you identify keywords relevant to your website. These tools provide data on search volume, competition, and potential traffic for specific keywords. Personally, I use Ahrefs.

Although the free version of Ahrefs is very limited, it still provided important insights for my organic keywords. It provides a table of all the keywords on my website. You can sort them as follows:

• Search volume: Search volume assessment of the number of times keywords were searched in the past month.
• Keyword Difficulty (KD): Generally, the ranking is based on a score of 100. The higher the score, the more difficult it is to rank.
• Cost per click (CPC):The cost-per-click (CPC) for CPC is similar to the keyword difficulty, with a base score of 100. The higher the score, the higher the cost.

Here are my top 20 natural keywords, sorted by position:

Top 20 keywords in web highlights on ahrefs.com

Looking at the overview, it's clear that the keywords "Web Highlighter," "Highlighter online," and "online highlighter extension" are the most important for my PDF & Web Highlighter Chrome extension. For these keywords, web-highlights ranks 2nd to 4th. But this isn't always the case. Unfortunately, the Ahrefs free plan doesn't include a location history chart. However, you'll see that last month I focused on getting these keywords at the top.

• Identify keywords with high potential

Now you know which keywords are ranking highest. It's time to identify the keywords most relevant to your target audience.

My usual procedure is as follows::I sorted the keywords by keyword ranking and then scrolled down the table. Next, I looked at keywords relevant to my target audience. Additionally, I looked at high-volume and medium-difficulty keywords. Then, I focused on creating high-quality content around these keywords on my website. By doing this, you'll see results quickly.

An important point to note: the "keyword stuffing" strategy—where you simply package all the keywords on your website—may have worked decades ago, but it's now penalized by Google. In fact, it can actually harm your rankings. Instead, try to integrate your keywords naturally into your content, avoiding overuse.

It's equally important to remember that keyword research is an ongoing process. Continuously monitoring and optimizing your website's content and meta tags to ensure they align with your target audience's interests and search intent will help you stay ahead and rank highly in search engines.

Final Thoughts

Google prioritizes legitimate and trustworthy websites for top rankings on its first page. Therefore, focus on improving your website's credibility and trustworthiness. Furthermore, improving your user experience will not only benefit your users but also positively impact your SEO ranking. Finally, conducting thorough keyword research and incorporating the right keywords into your content can help drive targeted traffic to your website.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I'd love to communicate and exchange ideas with you further. Please feel free to contact me anytime 😊.For 10 years, we have focused solely on omnichannel marketing for independent websites in the international trade sector!Main services: Independent website development, SEO, Google Ads, overseas social media management (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.), EDM (email direct marketing), etc..Choose us and you will have a modern, powerful website, an efficient and precise digital marketing strategy, and the growth and development of your team.